Tryvertising AKA Which Brands Give Good Samples

When I lived in the UK, I was part of a trial programme for new beauty products. I filled in a survey, paid my 20 quid a quarter (with a guarantee of receiving at least 80 pounds worth of loot in each batch) and then, like clockwork, received my tube of full-sized products to try out. So here’s what I want to know… it’s been proven time and time again that us beauty junkies like to try before we buy. So without a similiar Australian program, where are the best places to try before we buy?

My bathroom cupboard is chockablock with products I’ve bought, used just a handful of times and then decided aren’t for me. Why oh why is it then, that so many shop assistants are so unbelievably stingy with the things? Logic says that if a product is really as fabulous as the marketeers are having us believe, then they won’t have any problems letting us try them out before we shell out our hard-earned cash.

With that in mind, I’m making a stand. I’m only going to buy products that allow me to try them properly (that means not on the back of my hand or some similar nonsense) before I buy them.

I’d like to give a shout-out to the following brands who I’ve had good trials with recently:

• Kit Cosmetics, Chapel Street, Melbourne. I bought two products, but the assistant readily gave me samples of other products that I wanted to try (but amusingly, she didn’t think would be suitable – for what it’s worth, she was right).

• Aesop, Toorak Road, Melbourne. Again I bought two products, but the assistant gave me two samples of another product without me asking but that she thought would be good for my skin. I’ll be going back to buy it (it was an exfoliant) as soon as my current one runs out!

• La Mer, Myer, Melbourne City. Didn’t buy a thing but got a fairly big sample of Crème De La Mer. I had to ask, but the assistant wasn’t stingy about it.

I’m also prepared to accept a good return policy in lieu of a sample. I’ve noticed that on the bottom of the receipts for Kit Cosmetics they have printed part of the Trade Practices Act, whereby you are entitled to a refund if the product “does not do the job you were led to believe it would do”. Now, I haven’t tested this out, but that clause alone tells me that a lot of my bathroom cupboard should be going back to the store.

I spend a fair bit of money every year – about 5% of my income – on beauty products. So I have absolutely no problem paying for a product that actually works. What I *do* have a problem with is company after company touting their product as being the next big thing, but refusing to stand behind it. You wouldn’t buy a house without seeing it, a car without driving it, a pair of shoes without trying them on or indeed, if you’re my mother, a bunch of grapes without tasting them. So why the heck should we be buying beauty products with nothing more than a sniff test prior?

So, which stores/counters do recommend for a good try before you buy sample?